Even if, from a modeling perspective,
the study of social balance has rather remote origins, as witnessed by the pioneering works of Heider [1]}, Cartwright and Harary [2]}, [3]}, DeGroot [4]}, the dynamic social balance theory represents an active and timely research topic. In this regard we mention the recent works of Mei et al. [5]} in which two dynamical models based on two different social mechanisms, the homophily mechanism and the influence mechanism, are proposed. In the homophily mechanism, individuals update their mutual appraisals based on their appraisals of the other group members. In the influence mechanism, instead, each agent attributes an influence to the other network members, based on the appraisal that the agent has about them. Reference [5]} shows that both mechanisms drive the network towards social balance, but the homophily mechanism gives a more general explanation for the emergence of the social balance with respect to the influence one.
